- What is Genette's "minimal" definition of a "text"? How does he go on to complicate this definition in the essay? What does he add to your common-sensical understanding of what a "text" is?
- What does Genette mean when he argues that “a text without a paratext has never existed”? What is his point about the way paratexts change throughout literary history, from oral sharing of texts to hand-copied “manuscript” texts to our own highly mediated age? See p. 3.
- What are the “peritext” and the “epitext”? How do they relate to the main term of “paratext” that G uses? What does the “formula” mean, “paratext = peritext + epitext”? See p. 5.
- How does Genette describe the communicative circuit around the paratext? How does his argument relate to Jakobson’s? Who is/are the author/s of the different paratextual elements? What is the difference between the public, private, and intimate paratexts, according to Genette? See p. 9.
- What is the function of the paratext? See p. 12.
- What does Genette mean by “synchronic” vs. “diachronic” approaches to the paratext? What does he suggest about approaches that ignore the paratext’s history vs. those that analyze the paratext’s change over time? See p. 13.
- Take a book off your shelf at home (or on your e-reader or on your phone or…). Explore its paratext. What are some of the elements you can find? What function do they serve in structuring the way we consume the text proper? What might some of its “epitexts,” the elements that are tied to the text but not bound within the pages of the book, that exist “out there” in the world?
